More gravel hit the truck. Junior climbed back in. “That gift horse/mouth thing,” he said. “Whatever the fuck. That’s what they’re doing.”
“Be happy they’re not shooting.” Petes started laying on Hoosier’s horn, trying to clear a path to drive through. The kids dispersed slowly, heading back to the homes we’d be searching later for guns and clues.
“Now that that’s over,” Henzlick said, “can we start looking for the Three Stooges?”
The air inside Hoosier had gone back to hot and stale. There would be a sandstorm that night.
“We got one more stop,” Winter said.
Henzlick leaned his head back and pulled his sunglasses down off his forehead. “Wake me up when it’s over.”
Petes gave everyone but Junior and Henzlick a cup of chocolate. “We earned this shit,” he said. He ate his cup. Then he ate three more.
By the time we pulled Hoosier up to the hospital, there were only five cups of ice cream left, two chocolate, two cookies and cream, and one pistachio. Winter had stashed them away in one of Hoosier’s floor compartments.
“Why the fuck you do that?” Petes asked.
“I happen to know she’s got family,” Winter said, blushing.
“She?”
“Miss Pink Shoes,” Junior said, pointing out the window at the girl, just then making her way out the hospital doors.
“Excuse me, guys,” Winter said. “Urgent business to attend to.” He grabbed a cup of pistachio and hopped out of the truck, brushing dirt off his uniform. He looked like a sixteen-year-old kid about to ask the homecoming queen to the prom.
“He’s got it bad,” Junior said.
Winter approached the girl and spoke to her for a moment. Watching him work was like watching the salesman of the month. No one could say no, not even a shy, heartbroken girl. They headed back into the hospital and we lapsed into silence. Typical Baghdad street sounds filled the quiet—chickens squawking, high, keening prayer chants, distant gunfire.
Then Petes said, “I’d give anything to hear the howl of a train at night.”
“Cicadas,” Junior added.
“Ernie Harwell,” I said.
It was a stupid game and we knew it, but we played anyway because it was something we could all understand.
“I’d give anything to eat Cincinnati chili,” said Petes.
I licked my lips. “Red velvet cake.”
“Henzlick’s mom’s pussy,” Junior said.
I glanced over at Henzlick. He was sitting underneath the picture of the bearded man whose face was still marked with a splatter of chocolate ice cream. There were drops in Henzlick’s curly hair like pearls. He didn’t seem to notice. His gaze was fixed on the hospital’s exit where Winter was now gingerly leading the girl through a group of women carrying children and baskets of purple and blue cloth.
“Anyone know her name?” Petes asked.
Henzlick mumbled something but no one paid much attention.
“My money’s on Bathsheba,” Junior said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Hot biblical shit.”
A few more minutes clicked by. I closed my eyes. If I concentrated hard enough I could leave the guys behind, get back to a summer afternoon in Colliersville where it would be warm and quiet, except for the whir of hummingbirds at their feeders. I could lie under the sycamore in my grandmother’s backyard, hang out in my old tree house until I got bored, then ride my bike into town, drink a Coke outside Tony’s Pizza, hover near the high school for a glance of the girls’ track team all stretched out on the sidewalk, after which I could hunt down Brianna Pogue, because no one’s as fun as Brianna Pogue, even though she’s as old as my mom, and we could re-create the send-off she’d given me at Miss Kitty’s the night before I flew here—pizza and, of course, strippers and Brianna offering this piece of arm-around-the-shoulder-beer-breath advice: “Kenny Garrety, don’t ever fall in love. And don’t die over there.”
I promised not to do either because that’s what you do at parties like that. Talk. Bluster. Brag. I’m pretty sure she knew I was already a little in love with her anyway, and not just because she was kind enough to rob me of my virginity when I was a freshman and covered in zits, but because she was sexy in the way snakes and thunderstorms are. No choice but to surrender. I thought of her body spread out below me, her eyes vacant and dreamy, her mouth in a hot scowl, and even with all the guys around, I got hard for a minute.
Petes said daydreaming was how fuckers got killed. The trick, he said, was to remember at all times where you were, to stay focused, to not let yourself, for even a split second, be too happy, but we all did it, even Petes, who liked to talk about a girl from home named Wanda who gave the kind of blow job that would make you believe in God if you didn’t already. “I mean like a nice God,” Petes said. “Not the Old Testament asshole or anything. A kinder, gentler God who lets you into heaven no matter what.”
“Gentlemen.” Winter was standing outside the panty hatch, his hand hovering just above the girl’s shoulder. “I’ve invited this lovely young lady to ride back with us. Save her the long walk home.”
I looked at Henzlick to see if he would protest this final breach of military command. He was staring at his boots. Plain black.
“This way her ice cream won’t melt,” Petes said.
Winter and Junior helped the girl into Hoosier. Henzlick offered her his seat but she bowed and sank down next to me on the floor, watching Junior as he secured the panty hatch. Only her eyes and pink shoes peeked out of that awful black sheet. When Junior gave the panty hatch an affectionate slap, her eyes got wide. Then she clapped her hands to her mouth. It was too late. A giggle escaped and the sound was like something taking flight.
* * *
There was a bombing.
That’s what we told the major the next day when the inquiries began. There was a bombing on the north side of the city and we got stuck. The road was blocked for hours. Otherwise we would have been there. There’s no doubt in our minds, sir, yes, sir. We would have prevailed.
It was Winter’s idea that we all say the same thing. Synchronize our stories, if you will. He made the suggestion before we’d heard that the three men we were ordered to apprehend were spotted blowing through a checkpoint at dawn. We figured that realistically, only part of our story was a lie.
“The carnage at the bomb site, sir. Well, you can’t imagine.”
“Pardon me, Private Garrety?”
“I’m sorry, sir. Of course you can imagine. Of course you’ve seen … I just meant. It was horrible to behold, sir.”
The major’s office was the only room in the barracks not covered with a thin layer of grit. It smelled like the major, who smelled like Head and Shoulders.
“I know of no such bombing,” the major said, crossing his hands behind his head, “but I have been told that several men in this company were seen yesterday in Sadr City tossing what looked to be cups of ice cream into a crowd.”
“Sir?”
“And that these same young men were thought to have brought a woman on board their Humvee at sixteen hundred hours for purposes unknown.”
The major liked inspirational posters. The one behind his head said, “Success comes in cans. Failure comes in can’ts.”
“Private Garrety?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you care to respond to these reports?”
“Well—”
“At best we are talking about insubordination, which will bring with it a dishonorable discharge. At worst, treason. And we haven’t even gotten into what’s going to happen to the girl.”
“The girl, sir?”
The major sighed. “Are you really so naïve that you don’t know about the Shiite tradition of honor killings?”
“Killings?” I said. That was part of the approach Winter suggested we take. If you feel cornered, he said, ask a question. If you feel worse, ask another. “How is that honorable, sir?”
“Young woman is discovered to
have been in the company of strange men for hours,” the major continued. “Anything could have happened, including rape. In accordance with fundamentalist beliefs, the girl has to be killed. The family’s honor must be preserved.”
“Rape, sir? Are you serious?”
The major stood up and walked in front of his desk. He leaned back on his palms and looked at the ceiling, which was starting to droop in one corner from a leaking toilet on the second floor. “Tell me what happened and don’t give me any crap about a bombing. As your shitty luck would have it, yesterday was the only day in the last month that there wasn’t a bombing on the north side of the city.”
The treason thing and the talk of so-called honor killings—that was all bullshit. I knew enough to know the major was just bluffing, casting everything in a bleaker light so I’d be tempted to confess.
“Whose big idea was it, Garrety? This ridiculous stunt?”
I looked at my hands. They were the hands of another man, bony and brown. I shook my head.
The major leaned toward me. I could see sleep caked in his eyes, a piece of egg wedged in his front teeth from breakfast. “Would it change your mind if I told you there’s a promotion in this for someone, maybe even a holiday in Kuwait? I’ve heard tell the women there are sweet and sticky where it counts.”
Dear Grandma, It’s beautiful here in Kuwait. Different from Colliersville. No tiger lilies or thistles, but pretty still. Palm trees everywhere. And the women are sweet and sticky where it counts.
I stood up. “I’m sorry, sir. I got nothing.”
The major let out a low growl. The wrinkles on his red forehead deepened. “Get me Winter,” he said. “Now.”
Winter was sitting against the wall, his elbows on his splayed knees, face in hands. When he saw me he tried to smile, but the effect was frightening, like the smile a skull can’t help but make because all the skin’s been removed.
I made a swinging motion with my arms and laughed a lame laugh. “Batter up.”
For a moment, Winter didn’t move. “She might die.”
“Who?”
“Don’t do the question bullshit with me. Save that for the major.”
“The girl.”
“Sihaam.”
“That’s crazy—”
“I didn’t know. It was supposed to be fun. It wasn’t supposed to get her killed. What the fuck kind of hellhole are we in? Where they chop off a woman’s head for eating ice cream? What is this place? Did you know it’s Mass Graves Day today? That’s their idea of a holiday. Mass Graves Day. Let’s celebrate finding a bunch of bones in a huge hole. Fuck. This ain’t Kansas, I’ll tell you that. This ain’t Georgia or Iowa or Indiana for that matter—” Winter’s low voice cracked. He was standing now, swaying in front of me, a skinny, terrified punching bag.
I tried to pat his back, but the gesture was awkward, wasted. My hand felt like a flipper. “The major’s just making shit up now, Winter. No big deal. We’ll probably just get a reprimand, you know. Lose a week’s salary. Get some dick duty for the next month. Don’t worry about the girl.”
“Sihaam, goddammit. That’s her name. Have the respect to call her by it.”
“Sure. Okay. Sihaam.”
Winter walked to the major’s door. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets. “It means arrows.”
“Really? Arrows.”
“Things that are straight. Beautiful.”
“Also lethal.”
“Shut the fuck up, Garrety.”
“Okay.”
“I thought you of all people understood.”
“Sorry.”
I walked back to my tent and there was Junior, on his bunk, cutting his toenails. His feet were like everything about him—pale, long, and slightly sour smelling. “He’s gonna cave,” he said, “and then guess what, Garrety? We’re all fucked. Fucked hard, like Henzlick’s mom at a cowboy bar.”
I was annoyed and nauseated after my meeting with the major and seeing Winter so shaken. Junior’s calluses did little to help the situation. “At the cowboy bar? What does that even mean?”
Junior took his toenail clippings and dropped them into a sock he called Suzie. He kept it tied to the leg of his bunk. The sock was the source of endless speculation. Why did he keep stuff in there? Why was it pink? Who was Suzie? Junior stubbornly refused to answer any questions. He guarded the thing with his life.
“All I’m saying is it’s rodeo time.” Junior waved the sock around his head like a lasso. I tried not to gag. “Giddyup.”
The tent was empty except for me and Junior. Petes and Henzlick were somewhere else. They’d already seen the major. Junior, too. He was the first one called.
“I mean, I pleaded ignorance,” Junior said, stretching out and letting out a long sigh. “And the bonus there is people believe that of me. But Winter. Not Winter. He’s a smart dude. The major will grill him and grill him. We are talking mutiny on the barbie.”
“That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard you say and that’s saying something.” I could feel heat rising into my face. “And he’s not going to cave. He’s not.”
Junior turned over in his bunk and faced the wall. It was late afternoon. Someone outside the tent was bouncing a tennis ball in the dirt. The sound was like a fist hitting dough.
“Whatever, man,” he said. “He’s just a fucking guy.”
If it were my story to tell, which it isn’t, I’d start with the picture the girl made sitting on Hoosier’s dirty floor like some sort of flower, black petaled, folded in for nightfall. Then I would talk about how we all comported ourselves like officers and gentlemen the whole time. There was no crotch grabbing, no spitting, no farting, at least out loud. I would mention that Junior didn’t say “fuck” or talk about how he wanted to take Henzlick’s mom from behind. Not once. I would add that Petes drove slow and steady, careful to avoid every pothole even if it meant waiting five minutes for a man to pull a line of mangy donkeys across the street. Then I would pause for a moment and say, “It began to get dark,” because it did and because it takes time for darkness to come over the desert. It’s like a cloud or a hand brushing the light out slowly. I’d spice up the story with some local color, saying that we drove by a bombed-out mosque overrun by feral dogs and a morgue doing good business. Mass Graves Day. “Taking the scenic route,” Winter had called it. “Stalling,” Henzlick had mumbled, but we ignored him. I might even touch on the music, say that as we neared the girl’s home, Hoosier’s walls echoed with “A Breeze from Alabama” and that Winter tried his best to get the girl to dance. But even he couldn’t persuade her to go that far. I’d end with how I wish it had ended. We knew Winter, our hero, was going to tell us that we could skip the raid, and there was a feeling of lightness that spread through the truck. This was a reprieve. This was mercy. The girl kept laughing.
* * *
A week later, we went on a raid to the same block we were supposed to search before—before Henzlick was made section leader, before Winter turned out to be just a guy after all. We were looking for a man and a woman, brother and sister, who supposedly had a weapons stash that would make Charlton Heston piss his pants. It was the kind of assignment that sent Petes to his Bible and Junior to the toilet.
“This shit is so wack. It’s wack, man.” Junior was twitching, trying to double knot his boots.
Petes swatted him on the back of the head. “Don’t try to talk ghetto, Junior. It doesn’t become you.”
“What does become him?” I asked.
“Feather boas, I’m guessing,” Petes said. “Rhinestones.”
Junior pulled his shoestrings tight with his teeth. “Fuck you and the whore you rode in on.”
We were sitting in Hoosier, waiting for Henzlick to give us the go-ahead. It was dusk. Winter wasn’t with us and so, even though there was a familiar stink about us—one part Junior’s feet, one part Petes’s breath, one part Henzlick’s hair gel, and one part my sweat, which for some reason gave off the faint odor of uri
ne—nothing was the same. Winter would probably be moved to another squadron. Someone heard from the major that there was talk of sending him home. He’d sort of gone Section 8, though no one called it that anymore. Post-traumatic stress disorder. That was its new name. PTSD. Junior was always saying he was going to fake him some PTSD and get his ass back to the States. “I’m gonna wig out!” he yelled. “Attempt suicide! Get me a nice nurse for a wife.”
We had a new guy, Jhon, a pretty actor from California who signed up for the guard after September 11, never thinking he’d actually end up fighting a war. We called him “Jahon” because of how he spelled his name and teased him about being a drama queen, though he never really said much.
“Why do we always get the shit jobs?” Junior said.
No one answered him. The curfew was just taking effect, so the streets were deserted and silent. We could smell cooking coming from the houses. It was easy to forget that people actually lived in such shacks, made of mud and aluminum scraps as they were, patched up between bombings. I thought of my grandmother’s house, its solid wooden walls, the bleeding-heart bushes out front, and something in me started to ache.
“It’s too bad about that girl.” Petes rubbed at his bloodshot eyes.
“Shut up, Petes,” Henzlick said.
“Well, it is,” Petes said.
“We don’t really know anything,” I said. “The major was probably lying about that honor killing stuff.”
“Winter said the major got a call while he was in there, confirming it. Throat cut. Her cousin did it.” Junior made a slicing motion across his neck.
“Junior, shut the fuck up.” Henzlick squinted out into the street. He looked like that shortsighted brainy kid you loved to torture in elementary school. We all hated Henzlick. We couldn’t help it.
“Holy shit.” Petes jumped up and stared out Hoosier’s front windows. “Fuck me running it’s her.”
“Who?” Jhon said.
We were up and beside Petes in a second, following his gaze to a woman being escorted across the road by two severe-looking men, a basket swinging from her hand. She had the same shuffling walk as Sihaam, the same tilt to her head. I looked at her feet for a splash of pink but they were hidden. Maybe it was one of her sisters. There was no way to tell with that black garment covering everything.
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